The bus ride was about two hours long, and by the time we got to the shrine, it was already much colder than in Tokyo. (I'm not used to whether under 80 degrees, and it was probably a cool 40 or so.) Our tour guide was fairly entertaining, his little flag for us to follow was really a car antennae and shoelace contraption, with which David was impressed because he could fold it up and put it in his coat pocket. "Genius!" he declared.
In addition to amazing Buddhist and Shinto architecture:
The shrine is known for a few things, including a carving of an elephant, which looks a little odd because the artist had never actually seen an elephant, only read about them:
Yes, that elephant has hair and claws. And there was a small old wooden building near the entrance, which at first you wonder what's the big deal:
And then you notice the carvings. It's the original Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil monkeys!
I always assumed they were from Grimm's Fairy Tales or something, but no, they are Japanese. The rest of the tour was great, too, amazing detail everywhere you looked:
After the shrine was a bus ride to the highest lake (altitude-wise) in Japan. A popular summer vacation destination, I'm sure it was beautiful, but it was full-on sleeting by then, and we only stepped outside the bus long enough to snap a picture with the lake in the background.
Last was the famous waterfall that the concierge was so excited about. As we approached the waterfall, you could hear the water, but when we got to the edge, "overwhelmed" was not the word that came to mind. More like... "where?"
In case you're wondering, this is what it looks like in nice weather:
I bet it would be pretty nice if you could actually see it. After a cup of hot coffee trying to warm up, I ran back to the edge to try and take one last picture before the bus left. The clouds had moved a bit, and this is the best picture I got:
Oh well, maybe next time.
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